Skip to main content

What does the city of Ember not have in Jeanne DuPrau's novel?

One can say there are many things the city of Ember does not have in Jeanne DuPrau's story. One of the most essential elements the city does not have is a natural source of light; a second is enough knowledge to be able to produce their own goods and make their own major repairs. Without a natural source of light, the people of Ember will be left in total darkness should their power source fail completely, darkness that is impossible to move around in and, thus, impossible to survive in. In addition, the city is not self-sustainable because the people do not have enough knowledge to produce their own goods or fix the generator; therefore, once they've completely lost their power source or all their stored goods run out, the people will perish.

Ember was built as an underground city of refuge to preserve the human population in the case of an apocalyptic event. Since the city is underground, the city is surrounded in complete darkness. The only source of light in the city is electrical, which is powered by a generator. The city of Ember was also populated by ordinary people, however, people who were not knowledgeable in sciences such as electricity or mechanics. As a result, no one in Ember knows how to fix the failing generator, as Doon learns when he asks the old man in charge of the generator how it works and receives the following reply:



Who knows? Our job is just to keep it from breaking down. If a part breaks, we got to put on a new one. If a part freezes up, we got to oil it (Chapter 3).



If the generator fails completely, the citizens will be submerged in complete darkness, which they won't be able to survive in for long.

Equally bad, we can tell the citizens do not have the knowledge to make their own goods because they only rely on what's available in the storerooms. The people have been led to believe that the Builders of the city have stocked the storerooms with enough to ensure the citizens will "always have enough of what they need," which isn't true (Chapter 2). The result is that the citizens' use of their resources without replenishing them will cause them to run out of what is essential for survival soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more